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The American Founding

Declarations

Conciliation with the Colonies

Edmund Burke

1771

In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature
which marks and distinguishes the whole: and as an ardent is always a jealous affection,
your colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable, whenever they see the least
attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think
the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in
the English colonies, probably, than in any other people of the earth; and this from
a great variety of powerful causes; which, to understand the true temper of their
minds, and the direction which this spirit takes, it will not be amiss to lay open
somewhat more largely.

First, the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen. England, Sir, is
a nation, which still, I hope, respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The colonists
emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant; and they
took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are therefore
not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and on English
principles. Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.
Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed itself some favorite
point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened,
you know, Sir, that the great contests for freedom in this country were from the earliest
times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths
turned primarily on the right of election of magistrates, or on the balance among
the several orders of the state. The question of money was not with them so immediate.
But in England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens and most
eloquent tongues have been exercised, the greatest spirits have acted and suffered.
In order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning the importance of this point,
it was not only necessary for those who in argument defended the excellence of the
English Constitution to insist on this privilege of granting money as a dry point
of fact, and to prove that the right had been acknowledged in ancient parchments and
blind usages to reside in a certain body called a House of Commons: they went much
further;: they attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it ought to
be so, from the particular nature of a House of Commons, as an immediate representative
of the people, whether the old records had delivered this oracle or not. They took
infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the
people must in effect themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting
their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist. The colonies draw from you,
as with their life-blood, these ideas and principles. Their love of liberty, as with
you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. Liberty might be safe or
might be endangered in twenty other particulars without their being much pleased or
alarmed. Here they felt its pulse; and as they found that beat, they thought themselves
sick or sound. I do not say whether they were right or wrong in applying your general
arguments to their own case. It is not easy, indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems
and corollaries. The fact is, that they did thus apply those general arguments; and
your mode of governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or
mistake, confirmed them in the imagination, that they, as well as you, had an interest
in these common principles.

They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the form of their provincial
legislative assemblies. Their governments are popular in a high degree: some are
merely popular; in all, the popular representative is the most weighty; and this share
of the people in their ordinary government never fails to inspire them with lofty
sentiments, and with a strong aversion from whatever tends to deprive them of their
chief importance.

If anything were wanting to this necessary operation of the form of government, religion
would have given it a complete effect. Religion, always a principle of energy, in
this new people is no way worn out or impaired; and their mode of professing it is
also one main cause of this free spirit. The people are Protestants, and of that
kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This
is a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it. I do not think,
Sir, that the reason of this averseness in the dissenting churches from all that looks
like absolute government is so much to be sought in their religious tenets as in their
history. Every one knows that the Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with
most of the governments where it prevails, that it has generally gone hand in hand
with them, and received great favor and every kind of support from authority. The
Church of England, too, was formed from her cradle under the nursing care of regular
government. But the dissenting interests have sprung up in direct opposition to all
the ordinary powers of the world, and could justify that opposition only on a strong
claim to natural liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful and unremitted
assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a
sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement
on the principle of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism
of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations agreeing
in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in most of
the northern provinces, where the Church of England, notwithstanding its legal rights,
is in reality no more than a sort of private sect, not composing, most probably, the
tenth of the people. The colonists left England when this spirit was high, and in
the emigrant was the highest of all; and even that stream of foreigners which has
been constantly flowing into these colonies has, for the greatest part, been composed
of dissenters from the establishments of their several countries, and have brought
with them a temper and character far from alien to that of the people with whom they
mixed.

Sir, I can perceive, by their manner, that some gentlemen object to the latitude of
this description, because in the southern colonies the Church of England forms a large
body, and has a regular establishment. It is certainly true. There is, however,
a circumstance attending these colonies, which, in my opinion, fully counterbalances
this difference, and makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than
in those to the northward. It is, that in Virginia and the Carolinas they have a
vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those
who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to
them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there, that
freedom, as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as
the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior
of servitude, liberty looks, amongst them, like something that is more noble and liberal.
I do not mean, Sir, to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has
at least as much pride as virtue in it; but I cannot alter the nature of man. The
fact is so; and these people of the southern colonies are much more strongly, and
with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty, than those to the northward.
Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our Gothic ancestors; such in our
days were the Poles; and such will be all the masters of slaves, who are not slaves
themselves. In such a people, the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit
of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible.

Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our colonies, which contributes no
mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit: I mean their
education. In no country, perhaps, in the world is the law so general a study. The
profession itself is numerous and powerful, and in most provinces it takes the lead.
The greater number of the deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers. But all who
read, and most do read, endeavor to obtain some smattering in that science. I have
been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts
of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the plantations.
The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I
hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's "Commentaries” in America
as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter
on your table. He states, that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers
in law,––and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly
to evade many parts on one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of
debate will say, that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of
legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All
this is mighty well. But my honorable and learned friend on the floor, who condescends
to mark what I say for animadversion, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as
well as I, that, when great honors and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge
to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the spirit
be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in
defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a
less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance;
here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness
of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach
of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies is hardly less powerful
than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep in the natural constitution
of things. Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you and them. No contrivance
can prevent the effect of this distance in weakening government. Seas roll, and months
pass, between the order and the execution; and the want of a speedy explanation of
a single point is enough to defeat an whole system. You have, indeed, winged ministers
of vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces to the remotest verge of the sea:
but there a power steps in, that limits the arrogance of raging passions and furious
elements, and says, "So far shalt thou go, and no farther.” Who are you, that should
fret and rage, and bite the chains of Nature? Nothing worse happens to you than does
to all nations who have extensive empire; and it happens in all the forms into which
empire can be thrown. In large bodies, the circulation of power must be less vigorous
at the extremities. Nature has said it. The Turk cannot govern Egypt, and Arabia,
and Kurdistan, as he governs Thrace; nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and Algiers
which he has at Brusa and Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster.
The Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He governs with a loose rein, that he may
govern at all; and the whole of the force and vigor of his authority in his centre
is derived from a prudent relaxation in all his borders. Spain, in her provinces,
is perhaps not so well obeyed as you are in yours. She complies, too; she submits;
she watches times. This is the immutable condition, the eternal law, of extensive
and detached empire.

Then, Sir, from these six capital sources, of descent, of form of government, of religion
in the northern provinces, of manners in the southern, of education, of the remoteness
of situation from the first mover of government,––from all these causes a fierce spirit
of liberty has grown up. It has grown with the growth of the people in your colonies,
and increased with the increase of their wealth: a spirit, that, unhappily meeting
with an exercise of power in England, which, however lawful, is not reconcilable to
any ideas of liberty, much less with theirs, has kindled this flame that is ready
to consume us.